dbreid
1/2 ton status
All,
I just got back from a trip to the Shaver Lake area in California with three of my friends with Toyotas, and I have a good story of a trail fix to relate.
We were doing the Coyote Lake trail, which was pretty fun. It was a nice day, and we were on our way back (it is an out and back trail). I was following my friend Nate in his half tubed Toyota, and he went over an obstacle with two boulders set up with kind of a "v" space between them and a dropoff after it. I had gone through this the other way already, so I was confident of making it, even if I scraped it. I didn't exactly get my drivers tire where I wanted it, and it slid a little on the rock, because of the soft silty gravel on top. Either way, it was somewhat driever error, and I came down off the obstacle with my rockers on either rock (no big deal) and I sort of landed hard forward and down.
The truck immediately died. I was a little embarassed, because I normally don't stall the truck, but it wouldn't fire again when I tried. I jumped out, popped the hood, and sprayed a little starting fluid in to see if it would catch. No love. Then I took a closer look, because I figured something else had to be wrong, and we noticed that the cap on the distributor was half popped off!!! Turns out that in coming down off the obstacle a little hard, I must have simultaneously pushed the cab forward and the engine back, and the firewall bumped the cap off in the back!
Holy crap!
I took the cap off, and almost cired. The rotor itself was broken into 5 parts...
1.) The main plastic part
2.) The little plastic "ear" that is normally part of the plastic rotor.
3.) The long, bent shiny part that touches the center of the cap.
4.) The bent black metal piece that conducts to the 8 points on the cap.
5.) The little insulator (which we never found).
I fished them all out, and we set about fashioning the following trail fix! Now, before the pictures, I want to be clear that this was by no means all my doing. I had help from my friend Nate (he had epoxy, and was the gluing mastermind, and the one who thought we should try to fix it in the first place!), and my friend John (who collaborated with me to drill holes - he had the tiny drillbits and the good idea!). Between the four of us (me, John, Tom, and Nate), we fashioned what you see below. It took a little while, because we wanted the epoxy to set a little, and we worked slowly and carefully.
Note the epoxy (white) the screws we used to hold the metal straps in place, the zip tie around the whole thing to help the epoxy cure correctly, and the screw to hold the zip tie from slipping. We also used pieces of zip ties to "buttress" the break, and wrapped electrical tape around the phillips head screws before we installed it in the distributor.
Anyway, we installed it, and after a couple mminutes of taking bets, IT ACTUALLY STARTED AND RAN!! We were shocked! It didn't run really all that well, to tell you the truth, but it ran! It idled just about perfectly, but as soon as you gave it power, and the RPM's started to rise under load, it would begin to miss, and backfire.
I drove it out of the trail (about an hour or more on "real" trail) then onto about 6 miles of dirt road type trails, and then 1.5 miles on the road, and then another miles down a dirt road to the campsite. The trail itself was tough, because I had to sort of play with the clutch a lot to keep it running and getting power. As soon as I throttled up, it would choke and backfire, but without the gas, it was hard to use the right gear. I would up driving a lot of the trail with the tranny in second, and the transfer case (Lomax 205) in low. The hardest part was on the pavement. I couldn't get it over about 18mph up those steep grades, and I wound up driving it in first (transfer case in HI) with the pedal halfway down, just kinda lurching along on the few strokes of the random piston that would fire correctly. The backfires were semi-frightening, and my girlfriend (who was awesome and patient through all of this foolishness) rode much of the way with her fingers in her ears.
I hitched a ride with Tom to Napa in the morning and I bought a new rotor, cap, wires and plugs, and redid them all, and we were back on the trail for real!
I'd like to thank my friends for their help. Without good friends with creative minds and skills, it would have been a long, long walk to Napa after sleeping in the truck.
Oh, and lastly, I am doing new body mounts and Engine mounts before the next trip.
-Dan
I just got back from a trip to the Shaver Lake area in California with three of my friends with Toyotas, and I have a good story of a trail fix to relate.
We were doing the Coyote Lake trail, which was pretty fun. It was a nice day, and we were on our way back (it is an out and back trail). I was following my friend Nate in his half tubed Toyota, and he went over an obstacle with two boulders set up with kind of a "v" space between them and a dropoff after it. I had gone through this the other way already, so I was confident of making it, even if I scraped it. I didn't exactly get my drivers tire where I wanted it, and it slid a little on the rock, because of the soft silty gravel on top. Either way, it was somewhat driever error, and I came down off the obstacle with my rockers on either rock (no big deal) and I sort of landed hard forward and down.
The truck immediately died. I was a little embarassed, because I normally don't stall the truck, but it wouldn't fire again when I tried. I jumped out, popped the hood, and sprayed a little starting fluid in to see if it would catch. No love. Then I took a closer look, because I figured something else had to be wrong, and we noticed that the cap on the distributor was half popped off!!! Turns out that in coming down off the obstacle a little hard, I must have simultaneously pushed the cab forward and the engine back, and the firewall bumped the cap off in the back!
Holy crap!
I took the cap off, and almost cired. The rotor itself was broken into 5 parts...
1.) The main plastic part
2.) The little plastic "ear" that is normally part of the plastic rotor.
3.) The long, bent shiny part that touches the center of the cap.
4.) The bent black metal piece that conducts to the 8 points on the cap.
5.) The little insulator (which we never found).
I fished them all out, and we set about fashioning the following trail fix! Now, before the pictures, I want to be clear that this was by no means all my doing. I had help from my friend Nate (he had epoxy, and was the gluing mastermind, and the one who thought we should try to fix it in the first place!), and my friend John (who collaborated with me to drill holes - he had the tiny drillbits and the good idea!). Between the four of us (me, John, Tom, and Nate), we fashioned what you see below. It took a little while, because we wanted the epoxy to set a little, and we worked slowly and carefully.
Note the epoxy (white) the screws we used to hold the metal straps in place, the zip tie around the whole thing to help the epoxy cure correctly, and the screw to hold the zip tie from slipping. We also used pieces of zip ties to "buttress" the break, and wrapped electrical tape around the phillips head screws before we installed it in the distributor.
Anyway, we installed it, and after a couple mminutes of taking bets, IT ACTUALLY STARTED AND RAN!! We were shocked! It didn't run really all that well, to tell you the truth, but it ran! It idled just about perfectly, but as soon as you gave it power, and the RPM's started to rise under load, it would begin to miss, and backfire.
I drove it out of the trail (about an hour or more on "real" trail) then onto about 6 miles of dirt road type trails, and then 1.5 miles on the road, and then another miles down a dirt road to the campsite. The trail itself was tough, because I had to sort of play with the clutch a lot to keep it running and getting power. As soon as I throttled up, it would choke and backfire, but without the gas, it was hard to use the right gear. I would up driving a lot of the trail with the tranny in second, and the transfer case (Lomax 205) in low. The hardest part was on the pavement. I couldn't get it over about 18mph up those steep grades, and I wound up driving it in first (transfer case in HI) with the pedal halfway down, just kinda lurching along on the few strokes of the random piston that would fire correctly. The backfires were semi-frightening, and my girlfriend (who was awesome and patient through all of this foolishness) rode much of the way with her fingers in her ears.
I hitched a ride with Tom to Napa in the morning and I bought a new rotor, cap, wires and plugs, and redid them all, and we were back on the trail for real!
I'd like to thank my friends for their help. Without good friends with creative minds and skills, it would have been a long, long walk to Napa after sleeping in the truck.
Oh, and lastly, I am doing new body mounts and Engine mounts before the next trip.
-Dan
